Trust Me, This is Better Than Cupcakes

At 6:20 pm last night, I received this text message from Kyle:

tomorrow is monsterawrs bday…you should do something…

Which struck me as amusing because the first thought that popped into my head was, “Do something?  Like what?  Have a party?  Bake my blog a cake?  Do I get it a present?  Maybe wake it up with a blow job?  The fuck do you do for a blog’s birthday?”

Truth is, I still don’t know.  Though I did decide that what I should have done was make cupcakes in the shape of my monster.  How fucking awesome would that have been?

But I suppose a less fattening and equally meaningful way to commemorate the even would be to share with y’all the story behind the name of this here little bloggy blog.  (Go ahead and take a peek up top if you’ve forgotten, it’s cool.)

It’s all Kyle’s fault, really.

Monster is Kyle’s pet name for me.  Stephanie Monster, in more formal occasions.  He started calling me that back in jr year of college when we first started dating/living together.  Not Monster as in raging Bitchzilla, Monster as in Sesame Street’s Cookie Monster or Avenue Q’s Kate Monster.  I like to think that it’s because my joyful energy and enthusiasm for life reminded him of those happy little muppets.  According to Kyle, however, it was from an incident in which he was trying to encourage me to do something I was afraid to do, so he told me to rawr at it, trying to instill courage in me.  (And it was in no way related to googley eyes.)

From the Monster evolved the Rawr.  When feeling cuddly and adorable, Kyle would ask me what a Monster says, much as a dad asks his little girl what a cow says.  To which I would respond, “Rawr rawr rawr!”  Over time, the ‘rawr’ took on a life if its own, becoming sort of a bubbly language without literal meaning.  It’s a sweet little way that we reconnect.  Kyle’s, “Rawr rawr rawr?” is a simple, sweet way to reach to me and say, “You’re still here?  You’re still on my team?  You still love me?” and my, “Raaaaawr rawrrawrrawrrawr,” is a sweet, simple way of saying, “I’m here, and I’m not going anywhere.  I love you so much.”  It’s a private language we share without literal translation but with endless meaning.

The Monster has come to encapsulate the essence of me, and the Rawr has come to encapsulate the essence of our relationship.  So much so that engraved inside my wedding band is, “To my monster” and inside his, “Rawr rawr rawr.”  To those of  you who know us as a couple, this child-like cuteness may seem incredibly out of character, especially when you consider that some of our other pet names for each other include Bitch Face, Asshole, Jackass, Ass Face, Bloody Cunt Rag, and Wonder Cunt.  (I’ll let you guess which pet name belongs to which person.)  Even without knowing our slightly abusive tenancies, I’m confident that our “rawr language” is responsible for at least 25 new cases of diabetes.  Here’s the thing.  Because of the nature of our industry, we have to spend much of our work days being bad asses, hard asses, and general assholes.  Being cute and adorable is generally a great way to get your ass kicked, or at least walked all over.  So when we get home and relax and burrow into our cozy bed together, we don’t want to be hard asses.  We want to be gentle and soft.  This is where we get to let our walls down, and expose those sweet, vulnerable places in ourselves.  Places where it’s okay to rawr.

And so became MonsteRawr.  A persona and a word that represent the best and most wonderful parts of my life, of me.

I am a Monster, and I rawr.

Here’s to another two years of rawr’s out of this motherfucking Monster.